Rick Hill is the Valero Alamo Bowl’s VP of Marketing and Communications. Prior to the bowl, Rick spent 6 years working for the Spurs, one season with Missions Baseball and two fruitless months trying to sell season tickets for the S.A. Riders.

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Winner, Winner Sausage Dinner

When you couple the popularity of college football with the explosive growth of digital and social media, the Valero Alamo Bowl is well positioned to make our 20th Anniversary season its best yet.

We no longer focus our pitches on off-the shelf sponsorships revolving around logo identification on a sign and other basic benefits. Instead we’re now able to construct true marketing-driven partnerships that last the entire Fall.

Our newest partnership is with Kiolbassa, a San Antonio institution since 1949. The discussion started with us asking to join Kiolbassa’s Friday Night Fever on WOAI which showcases local high school football games.

Now not only are we going to be taking our interactive tour to 12 high school games with them this Fall, but we’re also rolling out a number of cross-promotions. Here are the two of them:

“Kiolbassa You Pick’ Em…We Grill ‘Em” Contest: We’re encouraging fans to sign-up online or via Facebook to win $100 Kiolbassa gift cards by picking the weekly winners of Big 12 and Pac-12 games. The best overall picker will win a Valero Alamo Bowl Tailgate for 20 including game tickets, food and a reserved VIP tailgating spot.

While I’m not eligible to win, I’ve offered to help any weekly winner grill their Kiolbassa sausages. Last weekend, I successfully cooked 50 at one time to the delight of my neighbors.

Million Dollar Mark: Kiolbassa will set-up their smoker at Sunset Station for the 20th Annual Valero Alamo Bowl on Saturday, December 29. Proceeds will benefit the Valero Alamo Bowl Scholarship Fund. Fans will get tasty sausages and Kiolbassa’s support will help us reach $1 million in bowl scholarship contributions since the program’s inception.

Taking a page from the Kiolbassa partnership, we spoke to a cell phone provider last week. We discussed a number of event opportunities where they can showcase their phone and an outside-the-box idea that could benefit us both.

To help bring San Antonio attractions and highlights to life for both locals and visitors, we want to shoot a series of 20 short informative and humorous videos. We talked about the carrier handling the technology while we’d produce and distribute it in online.

Hopefully, we’ll have a whole host of marketing-driving partnerships to announce throughout the season. Until then, get your picks in the “Kiolbassa You Pick ‘Em…We Grill ‘Em” by noon this Thursday noon. The Pac-12 has four games that night so I’ll preheat the grill and wait to hear from this week’s winner.